My brother Baba

It was the Tuesday or Wednesday after Memorial Day weekend in 2007 that I got a call from my mom and my step-father Phil.

“So, something happened this weekend. We’ve, well, adopted a brother for you.”

I understood their silly tone very well, and quickly tried to assess the catch…running through a few scenarios in my head and finally realizing that there was no way I’d sort out what these two were up to. “Ok, guys, what’s up?”

“He’s from Africa.”

“Ok…”

“His name is Baba Mohammed and he will be living with us for awhile.”

When I sorted out that a full grown man, who spoke almost no English and was recently arrived from Cameroon had taken up residence in my parent’s third floor for an indefinite amount of time– dropped in the middle of their two lawyer and a gentleman’s farm type existence–I was, well, concerned.

I got off the phone and said to André, “I think my parents have actually lost their minds.”

Eight years later, my brother Baba Mohammed is still living with them. And I can no longer imagine my family without him.

Baba landed in our family through a series of events that are so bizarre, so unlikely, so almost comical now, that I cannot recount them all here. But let it suffice to say that Baba wound up in our family courtesy of a family friend who met him when she was in the Peace Corps in Cameroon. It was this friend that had brought Baba that weekend to my parent’s upstate property and suggested that he help with the small herd of sheep my stepfather had started to tend, you know, between drafting briefs and going to court.

So little by little Baba made a life with my family…built over, around, and through language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, religious differences. And little by little our family had it’s eyes opened to the very different reality that Baba had come from: one with incredibly close-knit family and community structures, but also with inadequate protections for workers, unsafe infrastructure, poor access to basic health care, and limited financial opportunities. It was a world we knew existed before meeting Baba–but it was also a world that we could easily forget about in our daily lives. But once Baba arrived it became impossible to ignore. We watched as Baba worked so hard to send amounts of money home that for us was the difference between replacing an old, but functioning, appliance with a shiny new one or a few nice dinners out…but that was, for his family, the difference between being able to access life-sustaining medications, the ability to visit a hospital, or to to take on the care of the child of his best-friend who was orphaned after a car crash and a disease likely caused by work-related chemicals.

But, having Baba in our family also includes the straight-forward day-to-day stuff. He is wickedly funny, politically astute, kind, patient, thoughtful, and so very steady. He teases my step-father. He adores my husband. He is protective of my mother. He loves Esmé with a loyalty that one hopes to see from their sibling for any child…and he loves her naturally and without hesitation in the way parents of fragile children know can be rare.

Having been the kid of divorced and remarried parents and with step and half siblings, I was accustomed to the kind of cautious notion of family as being something that was never completely defined genetically or legally–but as something that could (and would) morph over time. I have learned to believe that your family is comprised of the people who show up, who love even when it is hard, the people who think of you, who plan for you. And, sometimes, that can have little to do with “blood.”

Baba became my brother steadily and very easily, and by the time Esmé arrived there was no doubt that he was Uncle Baba. Baba has checked in during every hospital stay with Esmé. He has helped my parents shoulder their work at the farm. We have celebrated so many things together as a family, including his becoming an American last year (Ezzy attended the ceremony in red, white, and blue–and messy hair, see photo below). We look forward to soon welcoming his wife into our lives.

Over the years I have often thought about Baba coming into our lives as a kind of strengthening of our family…a centering force, one of the almost magical occurrences that helped us all be a bit more ready for Esmé…to help us be a family that thrives on the unexpected and not always easy happy accidents of life.

But, no matter why or how he became my brother, I am so very happy he did. It just wouldn’t be the same without him.